How Fast Should You Animate?

J.K. Riki

November 18, 2013

Recently I’ve seen a lot of discussion between animators regarding how fast you should be animating. How many seconds per day need to be complete? What’s “normal” in the industry? Are you going too slow? Let’s step back and take a look to see if we can set the record straight.

First it’s important to understand that “animation” is a very broad term. If you’re attempting to do very limited Flash animation, you’re probably going to seem to produce work at cheetah-speeds compared to a frame by frame animator drawing by hand. Likewise some animators simply animate faster than others. That doesn’t make them better or worse, it is just how they work. And finally the actual SHOT you are animating is going to determine a lot as well. Is it simple, without much movement? Is the character performing an intense action with a huge amount of objects involved? On top of all that, there’s framerate to consider!

As long as we go into the discussion understanding that there are so many variables it’s nearly impossible to truly have a “normal speed,” we can start to compare the apples and oranges that are “how much animation in a particular amount of time.”

Ye Olden Days

Taking a look into the past, animation was once measured in feet. That’s because everything was done on actual film (no digital) and so instead of referring to individual frames regarding productivity, people just said “I managed 2 Feet of work this week.”

A foot of film is equal to 16 frames. Since most animation for film runs at 24 frames per second, a foot of animation is over one second if on 2s, and under a second if done on 1s.

Editor’s Note: As Geoff points out in the comments, it is 16 frames regardless of if it’s on ones or twos. It would just be only 8 drawings if on 2s, vs. the full 16 drawings on ones. Thanks for the heads up, Geoff! Sorry I missed that.

In the earlier days of Disney Feature Animation, it was not uncommon for the animators to produce 3.75 feet of animation per day. That comes out to about 14 seconds of animation a week.

And that’s nothing compared to Disney’s FASTEST animators, who could blaze trails at 23-24 seconds of feature quality animation per week.

How does that compare to the current day and age, though? Surely with the technology we have now we go faster, right?

Animation Today

Truth be told, 14 seconds per week of film-quality animation is unheard of today. If asked to attempt that, most animators in the industry would laugh (or cry) and say it couldn’t be done. Today it’s not uncommon for feature animation (in 3D) to go at the pace of about 3-4 seconds of animation per week. A far cry from the 14 seconds that the Nine Old Men would churn out.

Meanwhile if you’re looking at direct-to-video film, it’s often in the 12-18 seconds per week range. Closer to the olden days of 14 second, but with a huge drop in quality by comparison. If you’ve ever seen a film produced direct to video, it can’t compare to the stuff that hits the big screen.

Side note: If you ever want something terrific to study, check out The Emperor’s New Groove directly compared to Kronk’s New Groove. The difference is staggering.

Television Animation varies a great deal, and also depends on where it’s being produced. In the US, some studios request their animators maintain around 25-30 seconds of animation a week, especially if it is limited style. That’s not particularly troublesome to do since limited animation has a large number of holds and focuses heavily on dialogue.

Game animation also varies a great deal, but speaking with a few folks at various studios it seems like “normal” ranges between 5-10 seconds per day, or 25-50 seconds a week. Something more important drops it down to 2-4 seconds a day, and during crunch time it can increase to 10-20.

Variables Variables Everywhere

Again, everything above is based on such a variety of situations that it would be foolish to say there was a hard and fast rule about speed in which to animate. The biggest variable is going to always be quality. Quality will dictate your speed. Ferdinand and I once did a 48 hour animation competition together, and by the end we were producing 10 seconds of animation an hour! However the quality was rather terrible at that point. Such is a deadline of two days.

On the flip side, the Disney animators of days gone by could, and often did, sit for hours or even days at their desk contemplating a SINGLE FRAME. Keyframes are so important, as story-telling drawings, that no amount of time was set to make sure they were spot on. The poses of such frames required near-perfection, so rushing was not an option.

The final word is that speed really only matters “whence a deadline fast approacheth.” If you are working at a large studio that needs things done ASAP, you may have to work at a much higher rate (and lower quality) than if it’s a personal shot or short in front of you. And when it’s a personal short, don’t WORRY about speed. Focus instead on doing the absolute best animation you can. Because at the end of the day, it’s very similar to a quote by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto:

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

Delay if you must, but don’t sacrifice forever just to go fast.

So how slowly or quickly do YOU animate? Leave a comment below and share your stories of studio work, personal work, or any crazy deadlines that caused your normal speed to shoot through the roof!

25 comments

I’d add that those footage figures for famous classic-era animators were for guys who had assistants, maybe a team, helping them get it done with inbetweens and clean-up. Sometimes a lot of help because the animator only gave them minimal indications to show what was going on.

Someone said Grim Natwick just about animated in stick figures but if they teamed him up with good assistants lots of work got done.

basically yes.
but keep in mind that the animators only defined key poses and breakdowns and did not produce the cleaned up pictures you see on screen.
they had clean-up artists and inbetweeners that filled out the blanks.

Im a begginner…and have learnt great lot from this post..from the little i have animated(puppet style)…i use to complete 4seconds with 5 hours of labour…im just currently working on my short(puppet style too) which im taking time on…after this short,im heading to the classical animation method with toon boom!..

Someone should write an equation that relates speed to QUALITY. Like you said the old guys at Disney did a lot more, but their quality was also way higher than anything done today. So it seems like if people are trying to do a minute per week (insane and stupid!) then the quality is probably piss.

I figure speed is one thing 2D animation software can still improve upon. I’m still waiting for an intelligent inbetween assistant. That is, something that will guide your pen strokes to make perfect inbetweens of the next and last drawing. Independent animators don’t have the luxury of having an assistant.

Josh, I believe that what you’re looking for would produce very dull, mundane quality. Richard Williams discusses this in his book and his videos. Take a look at his book to see how to avoid producing the dull and commonplace.

Honestly, I enjoyed reading this article. I’ll be completing my 2months as a pre-production artist next month. The first month has been very hectic! As a beginner, my pace was horribly slow and it made me very embarrassed among my other colleagues. Upon discussing it with my Senior, he himself said that I needed to work faster even if the output is not so good. Yes, when I am taking my own time, the final product comes out to been very gorgeous. But the sadness is that I am just hurrying into submitting my works on time.

I’m a beginner of 2d traditional animator. This post is really helpful for me. One of my producer asked me to submit 15 minutes animation project in one month. Which was impossible for me. I questioned myself “Am I really slow in work?” I get the answer of my question from this article. Thanks … for the article.